This paper uses panel data from the UK (BHPS) and Germany (GSOEP) to investigate the wage effect of entering the labour market with a temporary job. Further than the previous literature that studied the effect of the contract type on wage dynamics in the explained part of a wage regression, we...

This paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues...

Based on samples from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) 1984 to 2004, this paper investigates the evolution of wages and wage inequality in Germany. Between 1984 and 1994 wages for prime age dependent male workers increased on average by 23 percent and the wage distribution in West Germany...

This paper studies the effect of parenthood timing on future wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we employ an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effect of delaying parenthood on wages of mothers and fathers. Consistent with previous studies, we...

The artistic labor market is marked by several adversities, such as low wages, above-average unemployment, and constrained underemployment. Nevertheless, it attracts many young people. The number of students exceeds the available jobs by far. A potential explanation for this puzzle is that...

Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into "good" and "bad" jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that...

Gregariousness is an important aspect of human life with implications for labour market outcomes. The paper examines, to the best of our knowledge for the first time for Germany, gregariousness and social interaction at the workplace and associated wage differentials. Our empirical findings with...

The study analyses the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions in Germany based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2008. It focuses in particular on gender segregation in the labor market, that is, on the unequal distribution of women and...

This paper establishes that individuals with an internal locus of control, i.e., who believe that reinforcement in life comes from their own actions instead of being determined by luck or destiny, earn higher wages. However, this positive effect only translates into labor income via the channel...

We present a semiparametric method to estimate group-level dispersion, which is particularly effective in the presence of censored data. We apply this procedure to obtain measures of occupation-specific wage dispersion using top-coded administrative wage data from the German IAB Employment...